‘Study for Obedience’: This richly-written novel warns against turning a person into an ‘outsider’

At first, I thought I was reading it wrong – the youngest sibling is a “faithful and perennial servant”? Didn’t we all know that it is they who have it easiest? But Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience is an unusual book and life follows a strange order. The unnamed narrator is servile and always has been – we don’t know how old she, is but we’re told she is detested and reluctantly tolerated by her family and peers. Even her parents were prone to forgetting her and her teachers at school had been enthusiastic bullies.

Employed at a law firm where she is tasked to produce transcripts for her lawyer colleagues, her job is undemanding and unambitious. She goes about it mechanically – careful to avoid grammatical errors and adhering to self-imposed deadlines. She takes to the position naturally when she’s called to a “remote northern country” to run her eldest brother’s household. She cleans the house, chops firewood, and keeps the household running. But her brother soon departs – without explanation – and she’s left alone with his dog Bert in a place that is not just unfamiliar but openly hostile to her.

The rejection

It is an odd year. The sow had conceived with great difficulty but...

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